Buying voluntary offsets can and should be a regular part of the casual environmentalist’s lifestyle, just like recycling or carpooling. In this series, we’ll explore the voluntary carbon market, how to participate and why now is the time for action.

Deloitte has centered on two key areas where it can leverage its strengths as a business service provider to have a positive impact for the long term on the communities in which it operates: education and workforce development.

Monsanto presents a series on what it means to be “Climate Smart” in the world of agriculture. The series will cover the role of climate change in impacting food security, agriculture, weather patterns and society at large.

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So, your company wants to reduce its landfill waste. Now what? As sustainability reaches top of mind for investors and customers, more companies are beginning to tackle waste in their supply chains in order to boost their green cred.

An event series whose mission it is to bring together companies from around the world to discuss climate change and how they can work together to address it most impactfully. Now building sponsorship and registration. [INFO HERE]

For NI17 we’re creating an experience unlike any conference you’ve been to before. We’ll help you map out your Path to Purpose to turn your passion into a purposeful career by gaining tangible skills and actionable insights. [INFO HERE]

3p is proud to partner with the Presidio Graduate School’s Macroeconomics course on a blogging series about “the economics of sustainability.” This post is part of that series. To follow along, please click here.

By Andrew Shiflet In the building industry, designers and builders must balance a client’s desire for expansive outdoor views with the need to minimize solar heat gain and loss. Often, these desires are not well balanced and solar heat is allowed to penetrate through windowpanes and into a space. To remedy this, mechanical engineers design costly and wasteful heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems that absorb and remove the unwanted heat. This practice will continue unless we shift the paradigm of window systems design and re-conceive its role in the overall building system. Fortunately, nanotechnology engineers may have found a solution to this problem using carbon atoms.

The nanotechnology industry, also referred to as nanotech, has been the subject of numerous headlines in recent years, as new possibilities and applications discovered by scientists around the world help to transform technology, medicine, and building materials. Nanotech, which manipulates materials on an atomic and molecular scale, has shown great promise in reshaping the way products are designed because materials have unique properties and characteristics when viewed at the nanoscale.

Recent discoveries about carbon on the nanoscale have researchers and entrepreneurs alike wondering how it can alter or replace conventional materials and help solve problems like the one of solar heat gain. For instance, what if one could use carbon’s unique characteristics to capture the sun’s heat energy at the windowpane before it penetrates the glazing, convert it to electricity, and store it for later use?

Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO and founder of the Connecticut based company, Nanoholdings, is working with a global team of engineers to develop this technology. In an incredible breakthrough, scientists discovered that special sheets of carbon nanotubes, 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, possess the ability to flicker between transparent and opaque states, and everywhere in between. This can be useful if the carbon nanotube sheet is applied to a windowpane, because when in a transparent state, light and heat are able to penetrate through, often beneficial during cold winter months. However, using a short two-volt pulse, the sheet of nanotubes can change to become entirely opaque. In this state, light and heat cannot penetrate through, and the energy is absorbed and transmitted through the nanotubes, which are 1,000 times more conductive than copper, into an advanced battery unit, designed just for this use.

Researchers are hard at work exploring the nano-world and according to the National Science Foundation, the field is “at a level of development similar to that of computer technology in the 1950s,” (according to Nanoholdings’ website). Exciting advancements and applications are being uncovered every day that will soon help us enhance the ways we deal with challenges. Harvesting the Sun’s energy at the building surface will transform our buildings into localized power plants and make a tremendous impact on sustainability in the building industry.

Andrew Shiflet is currently a graduate student in sustainable business at the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, CA.